As broadcasting is digitalized, broadcasting environments are rapidly changing from conventional unidirectional broadcasting into complex forms such as accommodation of diverse reception terminals through a linkage between a broadcasting network and a communication network as well as multimedia and multi-channels. Also, increasing number of viewers who used to inactively receive broadcasting programs in a limited range of channels, want to directly participate in a broadcasting service or receive/watch desired programs at desired time.
It can be summarized that the broadcasting environments evolve into complexly and diversely personalized forms. In the complex, diverse and new broadcasting environments, an adaptive broadcasting makes it possible for the viewers to conveniently and efficiently consume desired broadcasting contents in form which fits to the preferences of the viewer at desirable time with diverse terminals. That is, the adaptive broadcasting provides adaptive broadcasting contents, which fit to a usage environment including user preference, terminal performance, network characteristics and a natural environment such as time, place and user's feeling.
The TV-Anytime forum is a group for defining a standard for the adaptive broadcasting. The TV-Anytime forum is a private standard organization established in September 1999 to develop a standard for providing services related to audio and visual in a user environment having a Personal Digital Recorder (PDR).
The standard for the adaptive broadcasting in the TV-Anytime forum is divided into a phase 1, i.e., TVA-1 and a phase 2, i.e., TVA-2, in consideration of an assumed system environment and major functions to be provided.
The TVA-1 is for providing application services such as search, selection, acquisition and consumption of audio/video (AV) contents based on Personal Digital Recorder (PDR) in an environment where a main broadcasting program is transmitted through a unidirectional broadcasting channel and additional metadata can be acquired through a bi-directional network.
The metadata means descriptive data for contents such as a program title, genre and overview, and they are generally defined as data about data.
The TVA-2 extends the consumption environment of the TVA-1 assuming the unidirectional broadcasting channel and the bi-directional network. It provides a package, which can be identified and acquired as one selection unit, by integrating diverse forms of media components such as an application program, an advertisement, an image, syntax as well as an AV program, which is an important service object of the TVA-1 in a home network environment.
The package describes information on the package and its components, and provides a targeting function for selecting components from the package based on the consumption environment and user preference and a synchronizing function for accurate consumption through description on temporal/spatial relationships.
However, there is a problem that a game is not included in contents types of components of packages suggested until now. Therefore, it is required to add games to the packages as a new contents type to follow a tendency that importance of the game remarkably increases in a user environment. Accordingly, it is required to define game metadata for describing a game and realize an adaptive broadcasting system using the game metadata.